


Lettuce Kill Zombies

by animatedrose



Category: Plants vs Zombies
Genre: Drabbles, Plants vs Zombies - Freeform, Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time, Plants vs Zombies: Adventures, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, Plants vs Zombies: Heroes, Sentient Plants, Zombies, gender ambiguous main character, includes characters and elements from various PvZ games, none of it is mine, poor Owner, protective plants, recluse Owner, talking plants, writing in third person with "they" pronoun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7249549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animatedrose/pseuds/animatedrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Owner wasn't sure when exactly zombies took over the world or when the plants in their garden gained sentience. All they had been doing was minding their own business, staying indoors as they always had been.</p><p>Unfortunately, staying indoors, defenseless, would only let the zombies have a better shot at eating their brain.</p><p>Thankfully, the plants in their garden seem very happy to protect them from the zombies. Maybe too happy? Just how did this all happen, anyway?</p><p>Mostly drabbles starring various plants and such. Not much plot yet beyond setting stuff up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Owner

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, I’ve wanted to kill the plot bunnies in my head for this fandom for years. Now I’m finally getting to it, kind of. Will mostly feature the plants and their dialogue, not so much the Owner’s but you’ll get some of their perspective too.
> 
> I’m taking a page out of Estirose and donutsweeper’s book in calling the owner of the house Owner rather than naming them. Go check out their stories. They’re amazing.
> 
> I will be using various PvZ games in this, mainly 1 and 2: It’s About Time, and some Adventures. Garden Warfare 1 and 2 may have elements borrowed, same with Heroes. Mostly characters, plant and zombie alike. We’ll just have to see.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

The Owner had no clue what had happened. One day the world was cheery and human-filled. The next, there were…

Zombies.

Yes, zombies. Shambling, rotting, brain-eating zombies. It was like a real life horror flick.

And the Owner was living in it.

They hadn’t known exactly when it had happened. The Owner was a bit reclusive, spending most of their time indoors. It wasn’t that they didn’t like people. It’s just that the more interesting and entertaining aspects of life were found indoors.

The only real outdoor activity they engaged in was gardening. It was easier to spend their life indoors if they didn’t need to go to the grocery store for food. They could just go outside and get it from the garden. So they did.

The first sign that things were going wrong was that the power was cut. The Owner worried that maybe the bills hadn’t been paid—they could’ve sworn that they’d done them, though. Without TV and internet and radio, life quickly got boring over the next few days.

How they didn’t notice the rapid decline in sound from neighbors was unknown. Maybe they just didn’t pay enough attention. Looking out the window to people watch or listening for the neighbors to talk a little too loudly wasn’t very high on the list of things that the Owner did frequently. The neighbors were annoying but they gave the Owner the space they required, so the Owner had never had a reason to complain about them before.

Maybe the quiet itself had been the defining realization that something was very wrong outside. The Owner couldn’t be sure. All they knew was that everything had been rather silent and still the day they went out into the front yard garden.

Nobody was out. No dogs barked. No people shouted. No cars went by. Nothing.

Maybe all the eerie fog around the neighborhood had been a tip-off. The Owner couldn’t recall a time when it had been so foggy. It was unnerving. They couldn’t see past their front gate.

The air seemed charged with tension, a primal urge to run and hide and survive. It scared the Owner.

They moved swiftly to the garden by the house, warily checking over their shoulder. No movement, though the fog seemed to create shadows out of nothing. It was frightening. The Owner checked through plants, hunting for any new vegetable growth.

Did the plants look odd today? They almost seemed bigger, more alive. Pulsing with life in a way no plant should. The Owner could swear that they thought some of the plants were looking at them.

They backed away from the garden. A sharp creaking made them freeze. That was the front gate. Someone had opened it. They turned to look, watching the gate swing slowly open, letting in more thick fog to ghost over the grass.

Something moved, slow and shambling. A dark figure wreathed in fog.

It wasn’t alone.

The Owner turned and hightailed it for the front door. Something dropped over the wooden fence, rebounding off of the garden hose faucet. There was a low groan and the most awful smell shot up the Owner’s nose.

Death. Rot. Decay.

It was enough to make the Owner lurch away from the door, intent on finding clean air. The fog and the scent curled around them, killing visibility and choking off breathing. It was all too much for one person to bear.

A hand grabbed their elbow, a trailing moan coming from nearby. It was green, old and rotting, the flesh squishing grossly with each move. It was like touching jell-o in a rubber glove. It wasn’t natural.

Green skin, bulging eyes, loose flesh, torn clothing… The words escaping its mouth confirmed what had once never been a fear of the Owner’s.

“Braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinsssssssss!”

Zombie.

It was a zombie.

Zombies didn’t exist. They were movie monsters. Not real.

But here was one, latched onto the Owner’s arm, mouth lowering to pale flesh and—

A bright green dodge ball-sized object smashed into the zombie’s face. The zombie stumbled back with a groan, arm slowly flailing. The Owner found their voice and gave a ragged gasp, bolting for the front door. They tore it open and turned to slam it shut.

A zombie forced the door open with a drive of its shoulder, throwing the Owner to the floor. It was much taller than the one in the yard, decked out in thick red and white football armor. It shambled toward the Owner, gloved hands extended, drooling for brains.

The Owner scrambled to their feet and sprinted out of the room. Zombies shambled into the house, one after the other, swarming the tiny two-story home with their undead ranks. The Owner was rapidly running out of places to run and hide. When the first floor became flooded, the Owner bolted for the second floor.

Barricaded in their room, the Owner watched their door shudder as zombies pounded against it. That football zombie could break it down, the Owner predicted. They didn’t want to be here when that happened. They searched the room for a weapon.

There was nothing.

The door quaked violently. The football zombie was there, crashing into the door, running over any unfortunate zombies standing in its way. The door began to crack and splinter. The lock wouldn’t keep them out forever.

The Owner saw only one other exit—the window. The drop wasn’t lethally far to the front yard below. It was doable. It needed to be doable. There was no other exit from the room.

The Owner opened the window and climbed onto the sill. They could see the yard below, clear of zombies. The garden danced in the soft wind, seemingly unafraid of the fog and the undead. Why would they be? They were plants.

The door busted open partway behind the Owner. A rotting green arm pushed through the gap, reaching for them. The Owner didn’t hesitate. They flung themselves out the window and hit the ground feet first, tumbling along the grass, legs tingling from the drop. The zombies’ moans echoed from the open window, wood breaking as they forced the door to the bedroom open.

Gotta move. Gotta run. Gotta find help.

The Owner moved to the gate, only to leap back in terror. More zombies moved in, entering the yard. The open front door of the house was framed with more of the same. The Owner was surrounded on all sides by undead.

The tiny shed was open, displaying garden tools. A shovel, crusted with dirt and rust, stood out like a beacon. The Owner lunged, seizing it in their hands. It was heavy but the weight was comforting. They finally had a weapon.

The first zombie stood no chance, being decapitated by the blade of the shovel. More followed it in rapid succession. It was like playing a video game, killing the enemy as quickly as possible. The Owner could do this. This wasn’t so hard.

But the zombies had numbers on their side, seemingly infinite. The Owner had only a bit of stamina and swinging the shovel around like a sword in wild, wide arcs was beginning to take its toll. Their arms screamed, muscles worn, breaths coming in short gasps. They couldn’t keep up with the waves of zombies being thrown at them.

This is impossible. They were going to die here.

A zombie’s head fell to the dirt without the Owner’s shovel doing the work. Various zombies stumbled on their journey to reach the exhausted Owner, losing limbs before ultimately falling to the ground in a heap of motionless parts. Green dodge balls struck from behind, downing zombies in droves.

Who was tossing the dodge balls? And why were they green instead of red?

The Owner turned to try and follow the pattern of the projectiles. They came from behind. Not in the house but out in the yard. They couldn’t see any people besides the zombies. It almost looked like it was coming from…

A green dodge ball smashed into a zombie, the projectile flying from the cannon-like mouth of a pea plant. It was far larger than it should be and bore oval-shaped black eyes. There were multiple pea plants shooting the dodge balls—no, oversized peas—at the zombies. Behind them were a couple of dancing sunflowers bearing smiling faces, giving a soft chant that echoed like background music.

“Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow—”

An endless chant of “grow”.

The zombies began to shamble away, some scaling the fence to drop over the far side with sickening wet thumps. Some shuffled out the front gate, disappearing into the swirling fog around the house. The ones in the house flooded out into the yard, most succumbing to the barrage of super-sized peas.

The battle only lasted a few minutes. The Owner’s house was zombie free once more.

The Owner sighed, lowering the shovel before facing their garden of peas and sunflowers. All of the plants looked up at the Owner, smiles and black eyes and leafy bodies.

“Are you okay?” a sunflower asked curiously.

“They almost ate you!” another chirped.

“But we stopped them!” a pea plant declared proudly.

“They won’t come back again!” another boasted.

Would they? Were the zombies really gone for good?

Somehow the Owner doubted that. Why would the zombies just give up because a couple of talking, fighting plants killed a bunch of them? The doubt must’ve shown on their face.

“They’ll be back,” a pea plant muttered darkly. “And we’ll be here to chase them off.”

“Don’t be scared, Owner,” a sunflower said. “We’ll protect you.”

“You’ve taken such good care of us, after all,” another sunflower agreed. “So we’ll take care of you now. Promise!”

The sunflowers and pea plants all agreed, bobbing and chirping to one another amicably.

The Owner wasn’t sure how to feel about this. First zombies, now plants that could talk and fight. What had happened while they were indoors recently?

“But we’ll need more help,” a sunflower said. “We can’t fight those zombies all alone, just the group of us.”

“There are stronger zombies out there,” a pea plant agreed. “So there must be stronger plants too! Owner, if you can find more seeds for other plants, I bet they would help us! Please, you must! It’s for your own safety, Owner!”

Go find more seeds? The Owner wasn’t sure they had more seeds lying around the house or shed. Would any of that really help at all? Just what kind of stronger plants was the pea plant talking about?

Going into the shed, they managed to scrounge up a few old seed packets from Bloom & Doom Seed Co. What an ominous company name.

Now that the Owner looked closely, the packets looked…strange. The plants on them had faces and strange names. Sunflower was the same but the pea plants were called…Peashooters. Did they really purchase these?

Maybe they were just going crazy. Hallucinating. Having some drugged episode.

“Oh, Owner! Look! The zombies dropped a packet!” a Sunflower cried, pointing her leaf near the front gate.

Placing the packets they’d already managed to find by the garden, the Owner quickly darted for the gate to pick up the packet. It was asparagus of some kind, from the looks of it. Aspearagus? What kind of names were these? Who came up with them?

“Ooh! Aspearagus! That sounds really helpful!” a Sunflower chirped, clapping her leaves joyfully.

“Wall-nut, Potato Mine, and Cherry Bomb too,” a Peashooter noted, scanning over the packets found in the shed. “These will definitely help us protect you, Owner.”

The Owner wasn’t sure what to think about that. There was some kind of zombie invasion going on…and they had to rely on sentient, talking plants to protect them. What had the world come to?

“Don’t worry, Owner. We’re on your side,” a Sunflower reassured gently.

Somehow that did reassure the Owner. They smiled weakly before eyeing the surrounding fog. No sign of life or undead. Good and bad.

They turned back to the garden of Sunflowers and Peashooters, their only form of defense so far. The zombies would no doubt return for the Owner’s brain. It would be up to the plants to protect them from such a fate.

That didn’t mean the Owner wouldn’t have their own job to do. They had their work cut out for them.


	2. Sunflower

“We’re coming…”

A zombie slowly shambled through the front gate, shuffling across the yard at a snail’s pace. That didn’t make them any less deadly, though. The Owner knew that from experience. Get enough of those zombies together and they could move a lot faster than you’d think they could. Two days ago taught the Owner that much.

Two days of relative peace and quiet. Time that the Owner spent with their new allies, the plants. The Owner had no clue if it was just their plants that were sentient or if all plants had been affected. The grass seemed to stay the same, non-sentient and static in position, no eyes or voice.

The Owner was grateful for that. Living grass would make walking across their lawn a real nightmare.

Not that the zombies didn’t do that enough for them as is.

A brilliant orb of orange-yellow light gently floated down from the sky. It was like a tiny sun, even bearing a small smiling face on it. The Owner reached out to catch it.

They remembered Sunflower telling them about these little lights. They were essentially light condensed into tiny suns. They didn’t hurt to touch, just a little warm, and could be handled easily. These tiny suns could be used to help grow plants.

Well, actually, the suns were a requirement now. Just putting the seed in the ground was a start but the plants would no longer bloom without the required amount of tiny suns. Sunflower taught the Owner all about these. She could create these tiny suns herself. That was her job.

She said the sun wanted to help them fight the zombies. That’s why the tiny suns were made. The Owner could catch them and, with enough, could plant more plants to fight off zombies. The reason Sunflower and her four sisters, along with Peashooter and his four brothers, had no required suns to bloom was because they were planted before the zombies appeared. They hadn’t needed sun. They just evolved from what was already planted in the Owner’s garden.

All other plants that the Owner wanted to plant required the tiny suns to give the seed life. It was the suns that made them grow instantly from seeds into flourishing plants, no wait time needed. But the seeds needed time to recharge between plantings, so the Owner needed to be careful with plant placement.

Good thing the Owner had their shovel to help transplant or dig up plants that were placed wrong. The garden was too small to host many plants, limiting how much defense the Owner’s leafy friends could put up against the undead crossing their lawn.

So the lawn itself became the battlefield and the garden.

Sunflower and Peashooter had no idea why exactly they were born. They just knew that their job was to kill zombies. They wanted to protect the Owner, who had nurtured the ten plants before they became sentient. They were certain that other plants they found would also want to help kill the zombies and protect the Owner.

The Owner wasn’t completely sure on that. Any new plants would likely kill the zombies…but protect the Owner? They weren’t sure about that.

But Sunflower sounded so certain that it would be that way. Even Peashooter was confident in Sunflower’s claim. The Owner really couldn’t dispute them.

More tiny suns fell from the sky. The Owner caught them all, the tiny lights seeming to merge together into this soft, glowing ball of warmth in their hands.

The zombies were growing closer. The Owner had already transplanted the five Peashooters and the five Sunflowers from their garden to the lawn, leaving them close to the house. There was still plenty of room for more plants, of course. The Owner just wasn’t sure what to plant next.

The Owner stayed near the safety of the doorstep into their house, empty of zombies. A safe refuge. Peashooter had told the Owner to stay back and let the plants handle the zombies. There was no need to recklessly endanger the Owner.

The Owner felt useless. What were they supposed to do now?

The Sunflowers in front of the Owner began to glow, golden light coming from their beautiful faces. A tiny sun formed from each, floating lazily to the grass by the sisters’ stems. Sunflower smiled at the Owner.

“There! Now we have…more suns for…more firepower…”

She sounded exhausted. The Owner collected the suns before patting the petals of each Sunflower in thanks. They swooned and smiled before beginning their “grow” chant, encouraging the Peashooter brothers. The brothers kept firing their peas, knocking down zombies before they could get halfway across the lawn.

.o.o.o.o.

The heat of another sun growing inside of her made Sunflower shiver. It was hot, almost unbearably so…but she would endure. She had to.

For the Owner, she would do this without complaint.

The sun looked upon her and her sisters as the necessary help it would require to kill the zombies. Why plants were chosen, she did not know. There were a lot of things she did not know.

Why zombies? Why plants? Why war? Why the Owner? Why?

There were other questions but the “why” questions were the most numerous, in Sunflower’s opinion.

Peashooter and his brothers were gradually wearing the enemy numbers down. The zombies came in various waves. The last would soon be upon them, heralded by a zombie carrying a flag. On that flag will be a picture of a brain. It made Sunflower uncomfortable to see the organ that the zombies wanted the Owner for so badly.

The heat was growing more intense with every passing second. She could feel her face glowing. The Owner had looked alarmed the first few times she and her sisters produced suns. Now there was just concern. Concern for them.

“Do not worry…Owner… We are fine…really…” one of her sisters reassured tiredly, a sun glowing brilliantly at her stem.

The Owner was so sweet and caring. Sunflower remembered their face as they watered her and her sisters in those few peaceful days before the fog and the zombies. The Owner had a big heart and was so accepting. She couldn’t help but adore them for it.

She couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing the Owner’s smile or hearing their praises. If the Owner became a zombie, all of that would disappear forever. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

She may not be able to fight, but she would do the next best thing. She would put her all into making suns. She would give the Owner all the ammo they needed to stay safe.

The heat hit a blinding point and her eyes closed, stem arching toward the sky. Her petals flared as her face lit up like the sun itself.

Then the heat died, a tiny sun floating to the grass. Sunflower slumped briefly, catching her breath. She could hear Peashooter and his brothers cheering.

The fight was over. At least for today. That was good enough for her.


	3. Peashooter

The five brothers had been transplanted from the garden to the lawn in a full line. Five Peashooters, side by side, taking out zombies. Just another day in the life of zombie-slaying plants.

The Owner was safely behind the Sunflowers, on the doorstep of their house, ready to flee inside to safety. The brothers had agreed, when the Owner was busy listening to the Sunflower sisters tell them about the suns, that they would defend the Owner no matter what, even if the zombies had to eat them.

Because that was a very real possibility. Maybe not against these plain, weak zombies but there were stronger ones out there. Like the football zombie that had broken into the Owner’s house two days ago. It had taken all five Peashooters firing simultaneously to defeat it before it could hurt the Owner.

If threats like that were frequent enemies, the brothers quietly accepted the fact that they may die in the line of duty.

But that was for future battles. Today, the zombies were slow and weak, falling at the halfway mark across the lawn, limbs and head falling to the grass in rotting chunks. These were easy prey to the brothers.

The Owner darted close to the Sunflowers, gathering the suns that fell from the sky. If any fell too close to the line of fire, a brother would stop firing to gather it in his mouth and toss it back to the safety of the Sunflowers. There was no reason to make the Owner run past the brothers just to gather sun for them.

Sun they weren’t even using right now. It was unneeded. The five brothers were enough.

Seeing the Owner valiantly fight the zombies two days ago had inspired the Peashooters enough for them to declare their loyalty and protection to them. Their desire to destroy the undead was only barely trumped by the sudden desire to protect this tall non-plant creature, the Owner.

The memories were fuzzy but the brothers could recall caring hands packing dirt around their seeds, watering them, helping them grow. The Owner had given them life that had not come from the suns. These lives, the five Peashooter brothers and the five Sunflower sisters, had been maintained by the Owner and the Owner alone. It was enough for any loyal zombie-killing pea plant to lay down his leaves and vow protection to such a being.

The fact that the Owner was not a plant didn’t bother the Peashooters. The Owner could become a zombie if they were not careful. They would defend against this at all costs.

The zombie numbers began to thin out. The final wave was coming. The brothers could already see the flag that the front-most zombie was carrying, a brain pictured on it.

Disgusting.

The five brothers let loose with all they had, firing as a single unit. They had been doing this all day and they would continue for as long as necessary. Peas tore the zombies apart, knocking off limbs and rendering shambling bodies back into motionless corpses.

The battle soon ended, any remaining zombies who had escaped quickly slinking into the fog. The brothers rejoiced, firing peas into the air and head butting each other. The Sunflowers looked tired from generating so much sun, but the smiles evident of their petal-covered faces told the brothers that their companions were well.

No lives had been lost today.

The Owner slowly shoveled up body parts from the zombies, pitching them over the fence into the fog. It paid to keep a clear lawn for the plants. The Peashooters watched, ready to fire if a rotting green body dared to creep too close and take a swipe at the Owner.

Night was a worrying aspect for the plants. No suns fell from the sky then and Sunflower and her sisters were forced to work twice as hard to generate sun for any emergencies. Not that any had occurred yet. The zombies had yet to realize that attacking at night might be a smart move.

That didn’t stop Peashooter and his brothers from being prepared for the evening that such an attack would occur.

For now though, they were content. The ten plants pulled up their roots and let the Owner transplant them into pots to be taken indoors. The plants felt uncomfortable if they weren’t close to the Owner and the Owner appeared to feel the same way.

The windows were barricaded with wooden boards and a heavy cabinet had been shoved in front of the back door as added protection. The front door received similar treatment when they and the plants retreated for the night. Besides the moans of zombies wandering the streets, the night was rather peaceful in the house.

Most of the plants were asleep, taking advantage of the quiet evening to rest their leaves and recover from battle. Sunflower and Peashooter were still awake, huddled close to the Owner. They were looking through the seed packets that they had found two days ago. They had yet to find another since.

“Wall-nut could help us defend against zombies. He even has “wall” in his name,” Peashooter declared, prodding the aforementioned seed packet with a leaf. “And Cherry Bomb could probably clear out a bunch of zombies around him, like a bomb would.”

“Because it’s in their name?” Sunflower teased.

Peashooter puffed up in embarrassment. “Well…yeah…”

“Aspearagus can probably shoot projectiles, like you do,” Sunflower guessed, playfully poking Peashooter. “Just asparagus instead of peas.”

“What’s wrong with peas?”

“I never said anything was wrong with peas, silly.”

Peashooter looked at the Owner. He’d noticed rather quickly that the Owner didn’t seem to talk much. The Owner quietly looked over the three seed packets. Their fingers kept tracking over the collection of letters printed at the top of each packet.

Bloom & Doom Seed Co.

Rather strange, how the seed packets depicted the plants as they currently were and not as they should have been. Plants weren’t supposed to be sentient or talk, according to the Owner. There were zombies now, along with sentient plants. Was there a bigger cause than they were thinking of?

“Tomorrow.”

“Huh?” Sunflower looked at Peashooter in confusion. “Tomorrow, what?”

“We’ll test out these guys tomorrow, before the zombies arrive. If they want to help us, great,” Peashooter said. “If they don’t…then they better lay their roots down somewhere else. If they won’t help us protect the Owner and kill zombies, I refuse to let them stay here with us.”

“Isn’t that a bit harsh?” Sunflower asked.

“We’re fighting zombies, Sunflower. We don’t have time to worry about freeloaders,” Peashooter argued. “They either help or get lost. No exceptions.”

Sunflower looked hurt by that, petals curling in on herself. Peashooter forced down his guilt and ignored it. This was pretty much war. Everyone here had a job, even the Owner. No free rides for anyone.

Peashooter forced himself to keep that mentality as he half-slept through the night, on high alert for any sign of movement too close to the house. There was no time to feel bad about his decisions. He could feel bad all he liked when he was dead.


	4. Aspearagus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a few more I finished recently. Enjoy!

Zombies.

Zombies everywhere.

Aspearagus nearly choked on the violet head of his namesake weapon in his tubular mouth. The violet leaves curled around his face threatened to get in his eyes. He could feel his stem quivering.

How could the Peashooters be so brave in the face of all this? How could the Sunflowers stay so happy?

Why couldn’t he be back with the Owner, gathering sun and staying out of the way?

“We’re coming…”

The moan made a wavering whine escape from the lone Aspearagus, who sank on his stem. The Peashooters were lined up in front of him, one row of five experienced zombie-killing plants. They began to shoot instantly when zombies set foot on the lawn.

“Start shooting, you ninnie! We don’t have time to cower!” a Peashooter barked between shots.

“You can do it,” a Sunflower whispered.

Aspearagus was torn. This hadn’t seemed as frightening in the house when he’d been practicing, shooting at a bag of flour. But here, with actual zombies, actual fighting, actual death! He wasn’t sure he could do it.

He cowered, watching the Peashooter brothers fight. He could hear them grumbling, angry and disappointed. The older plant’s words came back to Aspearagus with a vengeance.

_“You can either help us protect the Owner and fight those zombies till your last breath…or you can take your roots and plant yourself elsewhere.”_

Where was elsewhere? There was only fog and zombies out there! Even the Owner had yet to see another soul. Was anything even left beyond zombies?

“RaaaAAAAgggGGGHHhhhhh!”

Aspearagus jolted. A strange zombie appeared, bearing a newspaper and heart-printed shorts. The newspaper had torn down the middle under the barrage of peas. This apparently had angered it and, instead of its slow shambling, it suddenly surged forward far faster than any of its comrades could.

“Oh no!” the Sunflowers choked.

The Peashooters opened fire, trying to slow it down. It lost an arm but the rotting beast was already before one of the brothers, chomping down on his head. He shrieked, the remaining brothers twisting on their stems to try and help but their shots couldn’t quite hit it without hitting one of their own.

“Peashooter!” the Sunflowers cried in horror.

Aspearagus cowered. It was right in front of him, eating the Peashooter, tearing his leaves and crunching on his head, bending his stem. Aspearagus felt true fear. In a few seconds, it would kill the pea-shooting plant and come for him next. He would die too.

“Shoot it, Aspearagus!”

The Owner? The plant twisted on his stem to see them.

“Shoot the zombie! Hurry!”

Shoot it?

…Oh, right! He could shoot it!

Aspearagus twisted forward on his stem, sucked in air, and shot the violet asparagus from his mouth. The zombie groaned, head snapping back in response. A second shot speared through its chest, sending it falling to the ground. It was dead once more.

Aspearagus stared, amazed at his work. It would take one of the brothers ten shots to kill a zombie. It had taken him two shots.

“Brother! Are you okay?”

The wounded Peashooter was on his last leaves, shaking. He wasn’t going to last long.

“I… I’m sorry,” Aspearagus choked, eyes burning.

“Heh! You got scared… You think none of us did?” the dying Peashooter chuckled. “Just…don’t let it control you. We’ve got…a job to do. So…do it.”

“…I will,” Aspearagus promised, wiping away tears with a leaf. “I will…”

There was no time to mourn. The rest of the zombies were slow shamblers, but now they could confirm that there were others beyond them in the fog. Stronger plants were needed to kill them.

Plants like Aspearagus, who stepped up to the plate to kill at long last.


	5. Wall-nut

It was probably a good thing the Owner managed to find the seed packets for Sunflower and Peashooter. The seeds inside seemed to be endless, adding more when it recharged. It was strange, but useful.

Wall-nut liked strange but useful things. Like himself. He was strange but useful. He admitted it. And that was okay.

Strange but useful…is good.

Zombies shambled down the grass toward him. He didn’t stop smiling or minutely bobbing on his round brown shelling.

Was he afraid? Yes.

Was he happy? Yes.

He was being useful. This was his job—to take the toothy bites and chomps for other plants. Like that poor Peashooter yesterday. If he’d been out, maybe that Peashooter would be alive right now.

But everything was good and bad. Peashooter died. Aspearagus gained courage. Good and bad. You had to take them both.

The Owner looked so torn, watching teeth sink into Wall-nut’s shell, cracking it to get at the nutty plant flesh inside. Wall-nut smiled at them—the Owner, the zombies, his fellow plants.

After all, it took less effort to smile than to frown.

And as long as he was being chewed on, the zombies didn’t register that they were being shot at by the Peashooters and Aspearagus. They died without realizing they were under attack. It was a good thing they had one-track minds, huh?

Wall-nut felt his shell splinter and break. His insides were being chewed. His smile began to droop.

This was the end for him.

But his brothers would be there to defend against more bites. That was their job, after all.


	6. Cherry Bomb

Cherry Bomb had proven to be a tough one. He—well, technically they—hadn’t seen a point to defending just one spot on the zombie-swarmed map of the world. Surely they could make more progress if they left this tiny yard and killed on the move.

The four Peashooters gave him the same warning that the fruit had heard them give to all of them—help protect the Owner or lay their roots elsewhere.

Cherry Bomb found that laughable. He didn’t even have roots! Morons!

Though he had his smaller sibling attached to his stem, he didn’t relish the thought of going out there alone. Besides, the cowardly Owner had his seed packet. Cherry Bomb really only had one life and one mission. They all did, the Cherry Bombs.

So he stayed, grumbling and cursing the mindless Peashooters out for their misplaced loyalty. They were better off on the move.

Then a Peashooter died and the cowardly Aspearagus wasn’t so cowardly anymore. The Owner had encouraged him to open fire on a charging newspaper zombie, killing it in two decisive blows. That was progress one didn’t see every day on the field of undead warfare.

Watching the battle today, Peashooters and Aspearagus working side by side, Sunflowers generating sun, and Wall-nuts taking the damage for the rest of the troops…it got Cherry Bomb going. He wanted in on that. That camaraderie. That glory. That thrill.

But he’d already made such a horrid first impression.

Appearances and impressions didn’t do much for Cherry Bomb…but this was different. This was a sprouting army, a group of fellow plants led by a leafless two-legger, fighting against the hordes of undead that lurked within the fog coating the world around them. This was a growing unit of tactical military power.

And he refused to be left out.

A Wall-nut splintered and broke under the teeth of a zombie bearing an orange traffic cone on its head. The green rotters were getting smarter, bearing tools for defense to help them cross the yard to get at the Owner. To eat their brain.

“Send me in! I can down that zombie in one blow!” Cherry Bomb declared, turning to the Owner on the doorstep.

“But you said before tha—”

“Forget what I said before! Everyone in that line of fire will be decimated by that zombie if you don’t send me in!” Cherry Bomb declared, teeth bared. “Let me redeem my fellow Cherry Bombs.”

The Owner looked to the Wall-nut under attack. There were no other zombies tailing the conehead. They had parted to let it go in, to take out the Wall-nut. Peashooter’s peas pinged harmlessly off the cone, having barely dented it. It would take ages to kill it and by then, both Wall-nut and Peashooter would be eaten, leaving only poor Sunflower.

It was an easy decision to make.

“Okay. Your turn.”

Cherry Bomb jumped, rebounding off the grass hard enough to carry him high above the battlefield. Then he dropped like a stone, red flesh growing as he neared the conehead zombie. He uttered a war cry, glowing.

He struck the zombie hard and exploded. When the smoke cleared, there was only black ash from the zombie. Not even a hint of cherry flesh was left. This was what he was grown for.

The rest of the zombies paused, staring. Realization hit and they began to shamble away as quickly as their rotting limbs would allow. The lawn was quickly cleared of zombies.

“Owner…was that…?” Sunflower asked.

“It was Cherry Bomb,” the Owner confirmed, pulling out the plant’s seed packet. “He said to let him do it. To redeem his seeds.”

“Well, he sure did that,” a Peashooter admitted.

“Then…he…?” Aspearagus asked eagerly.

The Owner smiled. “He’ll stay and help us. We’ve got our bomber.”


	7. Potato Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was going to do more of these today but stuff happened. Got this one done, though. Enjoy!

The earth felt warm, tucked in tight around Potato Mine. It always shifted, pushing outward as he grew larger.

_Any minute now…_

He had plenty of time to reflect as he waited.

There were lots of funny things to be heard underground. Earthworms tunneling. Moles digging. The faintness of voices aboveground.

_Any minute now…_

There was lots of feeling too, not just the warmth of the soil. He could feel vibration deep in the earth. He could also feel it in the few inches of ground above him. His antenna registered heat and movement, trembling with him in eager excitement.

He could feel zombies approaching.

_Any…minute…_

Peashooter told him all about zombies. How they wanted to eat the Owner’s brain. Potato Mine didn’t know what a brain was or why zombies wanted to eat them, but Peashooter had stressed that letting them do that to the Owner was very bad.

So Potato Mine accepted this task and waited beneath the ground for his moment.

_…Now!_

He surged upward in a burst of internal growth, his firm brown flesh ballooning in a final boost to give him height. His antenna blinked bright red, signaling his activation. For the first time since he was planted just a short distance in front of the Peashooters and Aspearagus, Potato Mine could see.

A zombie hesitated, not even a foot in front of him. It looked funny, all green and gross. Nothing like how the Owner looked.

Potato Mine smiled, buck teeth shiny and white.

The zombie groaned and lurched for him, bending to chomp at him. Peashooter had told him this too. Zombies would eat plants that got in their way.

It was time.

“Bye bye!” Potato Mine chirped merrily, smiling widely.

He instantly exploded in a shower of dirt, spilling dismembered zombie parts across the lawn in front of where he’d been planted. There was no firm potato flesh left. No sign other than a shallow hole in the ground where he’d grown for the past several minutes.

Cherry Bomb may be the aboveground bomber…but Potato Mine liked to think he was better at belowground bombing tactics.


End file.
